


Mnemonic.

by MercuryMapleKey



Category: Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rehabilitation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-22 21:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8301298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryMapleKey/pseuds/MercuryMapleKey
Summary: Wasp wasn't an idiot. He knew how the world worked, he knew who he was, and he wasn't about to let himself forget it.  Even if he wanted to.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ribbonelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ribbonelle/gifts).
  * Inspired by [try, try again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5961795) by [ribbonelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ribbonelle/pseuds/ribbonelle). 



> So! First thing's first this fic is set in ribbonelle's post-stockades au, which is an au where Wasp was picked up by the autobots before he got turned into a giant techno-organic monster, acquitted of his crimes because he was recognized as framed, and promptly put into a rehabilitation institute until he was stable enough to rejoin society. Alia's already written a few great fics in this au which can be found above (go through to try, try again and then you can get to the other two from there).
> 
> Definitely recommend you read those. 
> 
> Now then, the second order of business! Happy Birthday Aliaaaaaaaaa! I hope this fic kills you in the appropriate amounts you requested!

“Hey Wasp. Had a good day?”

It was kind of stupid how easily things fell into the patterns of routine. Everything did it; boot camp, stockades, fugitivism, the Institute. Wasp had lived a lot of different lifestyles, and no matter how drastic the environment became he found that everything fell into an ugly, boring little pattern sooner or later. It just became normal life.

Living with Ironhide had become normal life too somewhere down the line. After cycles of waiting for the big mech to change his mind and take him back, cycles of trying to scare him into submission with pointed throwbacks and constant glares, cycles of debating whether or not he should just bust open the window in his bedroom and escape once and for all… None of it had amounted to anything for Wasp. Ironhide just kept smiling those big, but cautious smiles and giving Wasp as much time to himself as he wanted – like he actually knew what he was doing for once – and everything else had fallen away to routine. Time passed in long days and short cycles, and before he knew it Wasp had been living with Ironhide for the better part of a stellar cycle.

One long, turbulent stellar cycle.

Wasp was on the couch with his pedes stretched up against the back and his helm resting on the arm, buried in a datapad when Ironhide came home from work. He was a little later than usual today, which wasn’t really something Wasp cared about but there was only so much a mech could find to do when he still wasn’t allowed into the main city unsupervised. Usually Wasp felt a kind of relief when Ironhide left for the day and when he returned, like a tension in his gears had been released – one that couldn’t quite decide if he actually wanted to have the mech around or not. A mild type of discomfort that Wasp had just learned to live with: just like the fact that, even after all was said and done, the Autobots still didn’t regard Wasp as his own functional mech yet. They never would. He’d be stuck on Ironhide’s couch waiting for the day to end for stellar cycles to come.

Whatever. Today was different than most because Ironhide wasn’t alone.

A small mech – not quite as small as Wasp himself, but definitely _gangly_ – had trailed in behind Ironhide today, laughing himself through the last part of whatever story he’d been telling then stopping in the doorway to shoot Wasp a sporadic little wave. Wasp’s optics narrowed as he turned his gaze to Ironhide alone.

“Fine.” He answered the previous question with a twitch of his shoulders, then: “Who’s that?”

Strictly speaking, Wasp probably could have guessed on his own based on the things Ironhide had told him about his job and his team, he could have guessed based on the voices he’d heard over open comm channels when Ironhide took calls at home. He could have guessed it himself, he could have been sociable like his therapist was always encouraging lately; but Wasp didn’t want to do any of that, he wanted Ironhide to tell him.

Ironhide laughed a bit, big shoulders jostling like he’d forgotten it was a necessary step to introduce your guest to your convict. “Wasp, this is my teammate Hot Shot. I’ve told you about him before, right?” He had, but that didn’t stop Wasp from glaring. Ironhide kept on like he hadn’t even noticed. “He just came over to borrow a few datavids.”

Well that was fine. It’s not like it was uncommon either, Ironhide’s teammates had a tendency to drop by from time to time, to pick something up, or share some information, or even just to say hi. They were pretty close as a team as far as Wasp had gathered and Ironhide had been missing out on a lot of hours and missions thanks to his latest Good Samaritan act. It made sense that they’d want to spend time together, and Wasp could see why. He usually avoided it too, if he could.

But today Wasp was already in the living room. He was already stuck to this stupid couch, Wasp rolled back up to a proper sitting position and glanced caustically from Ironhide to Hot Shot.

The mech grinned at him. “Hey Wasp! Good to see you, you know Ironhide talks about you all the time.” He seemed to catch Wasp's glare then, because his smile turned sheepish as he waved the thought away with a servo. “All good things though, y’know?”

Yeah, that was likely.

Wasp scoffed in reply. He didn’t want to be here. Pulling himself off the couch with a roll of his optics and towards his room without a glance behind him, Wasp let the door slide shut with finality and stood stock still behind it. He listened to Hot Shot apologize after a nanoklik or two of silence and the familiar way in which Ironhide brushed it off, an easy “Aw don’t worry. If Wasp really had a problem he’d let ya know.”

Ironhide had a lot of friends. It made sense because Ironhide had been on planet for vorns, he’d had time to cultivate them. That and he was just easy to get along with – the type of mech that could strike up a conversation with anyone if he’d really wanted to. A good mech, generally speaking. At least that was the impression Wasp had gotten back in boot camp; it was the same impression he still got nowadays too, sometimes, but Wasp and Ironhide were not friends.

Of course they weren’t. Ironhide wasn’t his friend, he was his caretaker. He had an obligation to talk to Wasp, and set up a routine, and ask him about his day; he had an obligation to make sure that Wasp was well-adjusted. Big difference. The only reason Ironhide had even agreed to take him in was because of the unavoidable guilt festering under his plating over sending an innocent bot to the stockades – Ironhide had said so himself. It wasn’t about Wasp, it wasn’t about what he’d done, it wasn’t about _anything_. Just an obligation. Who else would have taken Wasp in anyways?

There wasn’t a single answer to that question that Wasp wanted to reflect on.

He had gone to his room of his own volition to avoid having to talk to anyone. He’d done it himself because he didn’t want to see the difference. It was like night and day. Ironhide and Hot Shot were teammates, they were friends who’d been fighting alongside each other for cycles. Full of the same trust and support that all of Team Athenia seemed to have for each other, which Wasp had heard over and over again in Ironhide’s voice when he talked about them. But Wasp? Wasp would never be friends with Ironhide. He never could be.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Not after everything that had happened. Not after Wasp had been turned on, abandoned, and left to rust. Some bots just weren’t built to make connections, and Wasp had learned long, long ago that he was one of them. So it was only natural that a friendship would be impossible. Unwanted, even.

Sometimes Wasp forgot.

 

Sometimes Wasp forgot. Sometimes it was too easy to fall into the new routine his life lead, of relative freedom, and the Iacon skyline, and Ironhide, and Wasp forgot.

It was only ever for a moment or two.

They were in the city. Downtown, having spent the afternoon cruising through the streets and filtering through shops whenever Wasp pointed them out. It was a bit of a habit for when Wasp decided he wanted to go into Iacon proper. Probably not what anyone was expecting from a convict like him, but after a lifecycle of slagging it in the stockades and on the run there were a few little necessities a bot found himself missing out on. Like wax. And solvents, and touch up kits, and at this point Wasp’s washracks were more stacked with products and samples than Ironhide’s had probably ever been. But that was fine. Wasp was straight out of the Institute after all, and Ironhide had an obligation to make sure he was well adjusted. This was just something to look forward to, and when he couldn’t even be trusted to go into town on his own there wasn’t much else that met that description.

At first Wasp had hated the idea of asking Ironhide for anything; his pride and independence being the only things on his mind. Wasp didn’t _need_ anyone, he’d never needed anyone but himself and his own quick processor and he knew it. However, given the easy opportunity for a primped and polished chassis again Wasp had decided to make a slight amends in his previous way of thinking. He still didn’t need anyone, of course, but he did like to look good. Ironhide had never seemed to mind too much about the extra expenditures anyways, or at least he’d never complained, but then again with an Elite Guard salary there was no reason he should have. So Wasp didn’t care either.

They turned a corner, cutting across the mainway near the Iacon Academy grounds when another storefront caught Wasp’s optics, this one much different than the last.

“Ironhide. Remember this place?” Wasp transformed in front of the building, an almost admissible hole in the wall energon-bar better known for its strange promotions and cheap prices then for its actual fuel quality; it was a popular choice among academy students. Not really all that significant, but for some reason it had stood out to Wasp and the longer he looked at it the more it came back to him. It had been a good day for him.

Behind him Ironhide stopped to glance up at the place himself, when he transformed his expression was halfway between a smile and a grimace. “Uh, yep. I remember it.”

Wasp smirked, he didn’t bring up this part of his past often, but when he did it was usually to make fun of someone. “Right. So you remember the challenge you made with the cadets in our rival squadron.” Wasp sure did.

This time Ironhide groaned, pressing a servo to his tanks as he recalled that particular memory. “Not so much, mech. Mostly just remember how sick I was that nightcycle, I don’t even remember if I won.”

“You did.” With twelve cubes of Nitro-grade and two more than their competition. Wasp hadn’t had to drink more than a cube himself, but he had played a hand in the messy aftermath. It had been a long night overcharged and a longer day drained when their early training started, but that was just the way things had been back then. Living in boot camp had been about living recklessly, it had been about knowing the system was there for you. Wasp wasn’t so delusional now. He knew the system had never been there for anyone, but maybe that didn’t have to change everything. Maybe they could still grab a cube sometime, or something.

You know, just something normal mechs did.

“Did I? ‘Course you woulda kept count of it.” Ironhide looked pleased with the turn of conversation; relieved even. Wasp could have even believed it was natural. “I haven’t even stepped pede in the place since that day, don’t think I could. Everyone back at the Academy loved it though.”

Right. The Academy. All the mechs Ironhide had met that Wasp would never even know about, a full component of Autobot life that Wasp had been denied from – because he _wasn’t_ a normal mech. Wasp’s tanks dropped. He curled his arms around himself in a protective stance and tried to push everything away.

Maybe they shouldn’t be grabbing anything together.

Maybe Wasp was a fragging idiot.

How many stellar cycles had passed since that day back in boot camp? How many vorns had Wasp been left rusting in the stockades? Abandoned and betrayed by everyone he’d ever thought he could trust, by the entire system itself, and his friend—Wasp had never had the chance to go to Iacon Academy, Wasp had never had the chance to make something out of himself, because no one had ever cared enough about Wasp to believe him.

And that included Ironhide.

“Wasp?” Ironhide was serious now, his big, dumb, familiar, smile eclipsed by a frown. As if that made a difference. As if that meant anything in the face of what he’d done. “Is something wrong?”

Wasp would have liked to believe that he’d said it out of concern, but he didn’t. He never would: Wasp wasn’t friends with Ironhide. Of course something was fragging wrong. It didn’t matter how much effort Ironhide put in now, it didn’t matter how guilty he was, or how familiar his smiles were, or how many different polishes he’d let Wasp keep in the washracks – Ironhide had stood by and let them drag Wasp off to the stockades, and now nothing would ever be enough. Not enough to ever convince Wasp that he actually cared anymore. Not enough to persuade Wasp that he could ever come to like Ironhide ever again. Of course he wouldn’t. Wasp knew better than to care about anyone, and Ironhide was unforgiveable.

“What a joke.” Wasp’s scowl was enough to sour the entire atmosphere he’d mistakenly created and ended the conversation flat. With a scoff he transformed smoothly, pulling back into the passing traffic. Neither of them said so much as a word on the trip back, and when Wasp got back to his room he locked himself back within it instantly.

It _was_ a joke. It was a joke to believe that Wasp could ever escape his past, and even more so to think that things could ever go back to the way they’d been before. Boot camp, a bygone era where the delusions ran high in a system that didn’t care. Because Wasp wasn’t friends with Ironhide. Not anymore, not like he had been, and not like he ever could be again. In the end Wasp didn’t care. He didn’t want to get involved with Ironhide again anyways. Who needed a mech like that?

Sometimes Wasp forgot. Sometimes he wished that he could.

 

Sometimes Wasp wished that he could forget. Sometimes he would catch his reflection and all Wasp would see were ugly purple optics, sometimes he would speak aloud and all he would hear was a pitiful buzzing vocaliser. Wasp was an ex-convict, he was a product of the Autobot stockades and all the horrors they had inflicted on him there, and they stuck with him. Some days he knew it. It was impossible to tell where Wasp ended and the stockades began, no matter how far he went or how many cycles passed. No matter how ‘rehabilitated’ he was supposed to be. It was one mech’s fault – no, It was _everyone’s_ fault. Everyone was at fault for what had happened to him.

Sometimes Wasp thought he saw something. It was always the same; a flash of yellow, a familiar voice, he’d catch a sight or a sound, or a bot of a particular frametype – his own frametype – and all Wasp would see was Bumblebee.

Bumblebee. It was never Bumblebee. It would never really be Bumblebee. That mech was lightyears away, on a little mudball of an organic planet. Wasp had seen him himself. He’d found him, gotten his servos on him, tried to destroy him, and been slapped in stasis cuffs and dragged off to the Iacon Rehabilitation Institute for his trouble.

That was the way things worked around here.

Bumblebee wasn’t solely responsible for Wasp’s incarceration, and to say that he was gave the mech a power he didn’t deserve. Wasp knew it. Wasp knew all the lines his therapist liked to pull on him, and he knew how to play along with them too, but that didn’t change things. It didn’t keep Wasp from seeing the little glitch in the most unlikely of places, and it didn’t stop the fury that ran through Wasp’s energon lines like an electrical surge whenever someone spoke his name.

And when it did happen Wasp had very little control over what came next.

He’d been watching TV. That’s it. Just innocently wasting a megacycle or two watching the drag racing out of Velocitron when it happened – he saw him.

Bumblebee. It was never Bumblebee, but it _looked_ like him. A little yellow mini with a compact alt-mode and rocket boosters strapped to his chassis. It wasn’t him, it was _never_ him; Wasp’s spark seized in its casing anyways. His vision flooded with fury, a hyper focus that filtered out the rest of the world around him. Everything was Bumblebee. Bumblebee on the television screen, Bumblebee drifting around a turn in time with the rest of the pack of racers, Wasp’s heavy ventilations, Wasp’s servos gripping at the side of the mounted screen hard enough to crack. Hard enough to break him.

Ironhide hadn’t even been in the room, Ironhide had been off somewhere else in the flat doing whatever it was Ironhide did when Wasp wasn’t paying attention, but somehow he knew what was happening. Maybe he had sensed the change in the atmosphere, maybe Wasp had been talking out loud to himself again (a bad habit he had yet to completely break himself of), maybe it was just good timing. Either way Ironhide was there, and when he turned off the console Wasp whirled from the blackened screen and towards him immediately. There was nothing else on his mind. It was Bumblebee. It was Bumblebee. Where was Bumblebee?

“Bumble-bot! Wasp saw Bumblebee! I saw him!” Some topics would always be touchy ones, some bots Wasp could never even begin to forgive. And he shouldn’t have had to. Wasp turned furious optics up at Ironhide and spat like a feral. “Turn it back!”

They’d been here before, too many times before, but Wasp wasn’t thinking about that. Wasp wasn’t thinking about anything except…

“Easy there, Wasp.” Ironhide was right there, calm and solid in the face of Wasp’s hysterics. But Wasp didn’t see him; he only saw the remote still locked by a digit in one of Ironhide’s open palms. Wasp wanted to grab it.

He wanted to hurt someone.

“No! What are you hiding?! That’s Bumblebee!” Fueled with fire and frantic to expel it Wasp made a lunge for the remote. He missed and turned his servos on Ironhide instead. He hit and tried to strike him again. Big mistake. Huge mistake. Somewhere, Wasp knew it. “’Hide turn it back on!”

But it was Bumblebee.

Ironhide’s servos came to circle around his own like an anchor, dropping the remote entirely. Wasp didn’t see it fall, his own optics locked on those servos as he struggled against them. Struggled to stop himself. He _had_ to stop. He had to calm down. He was too late already.

“It’s okay Wasp. Just take it easy, you’re alright.” Slow and steady, Ironhide’s voice betrayed no insult or anger; he wasn’t hostile. But his expression… Wasp couldn’t bring himself to look at it. He couldn’t force himself to slow his ventilations or delete the incessant line of code still burning through circuitry. Instead Wasp tugged on his servos again, backwards this time, less frantic and out of Ironhide’s steadying hold. With nowhere to go and no one he wanted to deal with Wasp crumpled to the ground, fury still tugging at his fuel lines and scrambling his processor, and regret hovering over top of it like a cloud.

He dropped his helm into his hands, staring through his fingers, and shuddered a pathetic sound. “But Wasp saw him.”

It wasn’t Bumblebee. It was never Bumblebee. But no one ever understood; for a moment, in Wasp’s optics, it really had been. It always was. No one ever believed him.

Usually.

“I know, mech.” Ironhide crouched down on the floor beside Wasp and watched him carefully. After a moment’s hesitation he placed a comforting servo on Wasp’s shoulder. Wasp took what he could get. “Sometimes you see him places.”

Sometimes Wasp saw him places. Ironhide was hardly unfamiliar with the spectacle by now because Ironhide had been there for him each and every time; the grounding point Wasp needed to refrain him from committing a crime he’d _never_ regret.

But he would regret it wouldn’t he? He’d lose his freedom if he ever did it, they’d drag him back to the stockades, they’d never let him out again. Wasp would rust away to nothing just like before – and he’d be alone.

In that moment Wasp wished he could fade away entirely. He ground the flats of his servos against his optics and groaned; angry at Bumblebee, angry at the universe, and angry at himself for falling into it again. It had been Bumblebee. It hadn’t been Bumblebee. He couldn’t convince himself one way or another. Wasp shook his head in a rough rattle and stomped a pede against the floor, but Ironhide just waited through it patiently.

But then again, by now Ironhide was used to this. “You remember your protocols?” He asked gently, like Wasp hadn’t just tried to attack him in a blind rage, like he wasn’t chained through obligation to the biggest glitch in the galaxy. Like a good mech.

Why did he act like such a good mech?

Wasp activated his protocols. He vented a long and shuddering line as the program soothed his frayed nerves and realigned his muddled thoughts, washing over him like a balm. It didn’t do anything for the guilt, but nothing ever did, and after a few minutes more of slow venting and long silence Wasp was ready. He looked up at Ironhide for the first time with his optics set hard and guarded.

“Don’t tell them about this.”

Pathetic. Pathetic to be pleading after everything he’d just done, but in the end there was nothing else Wasp could say. There was nothing else Wasp could do except to depend on Ironhide to help him out once more. Even though he didn’t have to. Even though he wasn’t obligated this time. Even though he’d just been attacked in his own home. But Wasp didn’t want to have to go back.

Wasp was no stranger to the ugly truth, and he’d come to learn that there was never a truth that wasn’t ugly on one surface or another. Over time he’d learned how the Autobot stockades worked, how they twisted and broke a mech’s spark, he’d come in firsthand contact with how traitors were treated on Cybertron, and he’d long since been lost from the delusion that was the Great Autobot Cause. Wasp knew how the system worked now. He knew how thin the sheet of glass that he tread on was, and he knew – Wasp _knew_ – that if it hadn’t been for Ironhide he would have broken through cycles ago. They would have locked him back up in the Institute, or worse.

Because Wasp couldn’t control himself like his doctors and semi-frequent assessments said he could. Because someone would have gotten hurt by now. Because _sometimes_ Wasp thought that he saw Bumblebee, and when he did it was Ironhide who was around to stop him.

Because he was a good mech, sometimes. 

But Ironhide wasn’t friends with Wasp. He wasn’t good for Wasp. He had left Wasp for scrap the moment their friendship had become inconvenient to him and never bothered to look back until it was far, far too late. In fact, Ironhide was probably only with Wasp now because he’d drawn the short stick when it came to assigning Wasp a caretaker, and he only stayed because he was too nice abandon a broken bot.

But not nice enough to keep him from getting broken in the first place.

Sometimes Wasp wished he could forget.

 

But he couldn’t. Not for more than a moment or two at least, not when it really mattered; nothing was ever quite that easy for Wasp. Nothing had ever been. The stockades were a part of his lifecycle now, the things they had done to him just a fact. The cold air on the afternoon when they had taken him away, cuffed and bound like a criminal, the way Ironhide hadn’t even spared him a glance, optics locked on the ground while Wasp shouted on repetition about his innocence; all that was just another ugly truth. And Wasp didn’t shy away from truths. He didn’t need to lie to himself when the Autobots were willing to lie to everyone free of charge or choice. No one had listened to Wasp when they had arrested him back then. No one had cared. Ironhide didn’t care. And he had to remember – Wasp _had_ to remember. Because he couldn’t let that mistake happen again, he’d never trust anyone ever again!

_No one cares about Wasp_

And he couldn’t let himself start seeing things that weren’t there either. Ironhide and Wasp weren’t friends. No one was. No one was friends with Wasp.

_No one cares about Wasp_

 But that was fine. Wasp was used to it. Wasp didn’t care about anyone either.

_No one cares about Wasp_

“Wasp? You alright?” Ironhide. Peering around Wasp’s doorframe tentatively like he was unsure of interrupting, like Wasp had been talking out loud again. Wasp looked up from where he was curled in front of his berth and immediately glowered.

“Ironhide. What do _you_ want?” Wasp didn’t care about anyone anymore, he didn’t let himself.

Ironhide was watching him carefully, Wasp wished he would stop trying so hard already. The only thing he had to lose was something he didn’t want anyways.

“Noticed you didn’t refuel earlier.” Ironhide offered. “Want me to get you a cube?” He was just being nice. Ironhide was always being nice, and Wasp hated it.

So Wasp scowled. He laughed a mean, ugly little sound and watched with a sick sense of triumph as the cautious hope on Ironhide’s faceplates clouded over. “I don’t want anything from you. Go away.”

Wasp wished he could forget, he wished he could forgive, he wished he could have a friend again now that the worst of it was supposed to be over, now that he was finally, functionally free – rehabilitated.

But he couldn’t.

Wasp couldn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Hahahah, in the end i couldn't make it like... full unrequited without even a glimmer of hope. Of course I couldn't i built this ship with my own goddamn hands who do you think I am?


End file.
